Document last modified: Thursday, January 11, 2006
Important note:
Caninet may revise this Internet Usage Policy from time to time without notice.

Users of the CANINET Internet's Dial Up/High Speed service should consult this document regularly to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent version of our Internet Usage Policy. Questions regarding this policy can be directed to Caninet Security.

Introduction:

Caninet Dial Up/High Speed service provides a variety of Internet services to residences (Here after referred to as the "Dial Up/High Speed"). The Caninet Dial Up/High Speed service allows subscribers to connect to the Company's high-speed backbone network, host of servers as well as the Internet.

The Dial Up/High Speed service uses resources that are Networked with many other customers. Moreover, Caninet provides access to the Internet which is used by millions of other users. Each user benefits by being able to share resources and communicate almost effortlessly with other members of the Internet user community. However, as with any community, the benefits and privileges available from the Dial Up/High Speed services, and the Internet in general, must be balanced with duties and responsibilities so that other users can also have a productive experience.

Use of the Dial Up/High Speed service is subject to the following rules and guidelines. Each customer of Caninet is responsible for ensuring that the use of all Services provided to such customer complies with this Acceptable Usage Policy (the "AUP").

ANY USER WHO DOES NOT AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY STOP USING OUR SERVICES AND NOTIFY CANINET ADMINISTRATION AT (905) 357-7200, SO THAT THE USER'S ACCOUNT MAY BE CLOSED.

Illegal Activity:

The use of the Dial Up/High Speed service for any activity that violates any local, provincial, federal or international law, order or regulation is a violation of this Policy. Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:

  • Posting or disseminating material which are unlawful (such as child pornography).
  • Disseminating material which violates the copyright or other intellectual property rights of others.
  • You assume all risks regarding the determination of whether material is in the public domain.
  • Pyramid or other illegal soliciting schemes.
  • Any fraudulent activities, including impersonating any person or entity or forging anyone else's digital or manual signature.

Security:

  • You are responsible for any misuse of the Dial Up/High Speed service that you have contracted for, even if the inappropriate activity was committed by a friend, family member, guest, employee or customer with access to your account. Therefore, you must take steps to ensure that others do not gain unauthorized access to the Dial Up/High Speed service.
  • The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to breach the security of another user or to attempt to gain access to any other person's computer, software or data, without the knowledge and consent of such person. They also may not be used in any attempt to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network, or account. This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for you, logging into or making use of a server or account you are not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of other networks. Use or distribution of tools designed for compromising security, such as password guessing programs, cracking tools, packet sniffers or network probing tools, are prohibited.
  • You may not disrupt the Dial Up/High Speed service. The Dial Up/High Speed service also may not be used to interfere with computer networking or telecommunications services to any user, host or network, including, without limitation, denial of service attacks, flooding of a network, overloading a service, improper seizing and abuse of operator privileges and attempts to "crash" a host. The transmission or dissemination of any information or software which contains a virus or other harmful feature also is prohibited.
  • You are solely responsible for the security of any device you choose to connect to the Dial Up/High Speed services, including any data stored on that device. In particular, Caninet recommends against enabling file or printer sharing of any sort. Caninet also recommends that any files or services you do choose to make available for remote access be protected with a strong password (click here for tips on choosing a secure password) or as otherwise appropriate.

Inappropriate Content:

  • There may be content on the Internet or otherwise available through the Dial Up/High Speed service which may be offensive to some individuals, or which may not be in compliance with all local laws, regulations and other rules. For example, it is possible to obtain access to content which is pornographic or offensive, particularly for children.
  • Caninet can not assume any responsibility for the content contained on the Internet or otherwise available through the Dial Up/High Speed services. You must assume the risk of accessing content through the Dial Up/High Speed services, and Caninet shall not have any liability for any claims, losses, actions, damages, suits or proceedings arising out of or otherwise relating to access to such content. Parents may want to use a program capable of restricting access to sexually explicit material on the Internet. Content questions or complaints should be addressed to the content provider.
  • You are solely responsible for any information which you publish on the web or other Internet services. You must ensure that the recipient of the content is appropriate. For example, you must take appropriate precautions to prevent minors from receiving inappropriate content.
  • Caninet reserves the right to refuse, to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, that are deemed illegal by the RCMP, local police force, or otherwise cause unnecessary stress on the CANINET network, its services and its resources.
  • Caninet has no obligation to monitor transmissions made on the Service. However, Caninet does have the right to monitor such transmissions from time to time and to disclose the same in accordance with your subscriber agreement. By using the Dial Up/High Speed service to publish, transmit or distribute content, a user is warranting that the content complies with this Policy and authorizes Caninet to reproduce, publish, distribute, and display such content worldwide.

Electronic Mail:

  • The Dial Up/High Speed service or any of CANINET mail servers may not be used to send unsolicited bulk or commercial messages. This includes, but is not limited to, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, informational announcements, charity requests, petitions for signatures and political or religious messages. Such messages may only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it.
  • The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to collect responses from unsolicited email sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or email services which violates this Policy or the acceptable use policy of any other Internet service provider. Moreover, unsolicited email may not direct the recipient to any web site or other resource which uses the CANINET network.
  • Forging, altering or removing electronic mail headers is prohibited. However, you may insert additional characters into your from: and reply-to: addresses in order to prevent your true address from being automatically added to the mailing lists used by bulk emailers. In this case, your true address must remain obvious to any human viewer. For example, you may substitute "johns_" for "johns".
  • You may not reference Caninet Communication (e.g. by including "Organization: Caninet Communication" in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to the Caninet Communication network) in any unsolicited email even if that email is not sent through the Caninet Communication network.
  • "Mail bombing" is prohibited. That is, you may not send numerous copies of the same or substantially similar messages, nor may you send very large messages or files to a recipient with the intent to disrupt a server or account. The propagation of chain letters is similarly prohibited, whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such mailings. Caninet is not responsible for the forwarding of email sent to any account which has been suspended or terminated. Such email will either be returned to sender, ignored, deleted, or stored temporarily at Caninet's sole discretion.

Newsgroups:

  • Messages posted to newsgroups must comply with the written charters or FAQs for those newsgroups. Advertisements, solicitations, or other commercial messages should be posted only in those newsgroups whose charters or FAQs explicitly permit them. You are responsible for determining the policies of a given newsgroup before posting to it.
  • Posting or cross-posting the same or substantially similar messages to more than 11 newsgroups is prohibited. Our news software will automatically cancel any messages posted to eleven or more newsgroups.
  • Binary files may not be posted to newsgroups not specifically named for that purpose.
  • Forging, altering or removing header information is prohibited. This includes attempting to circumvent the approval process for posting to a moderated newsgroup.
  • Caninet reserves the right to discontinue access to any Usenet newsgroup at any time for any reason.
  • You may not attempt to "flood" or disrupt Usenet newsgroups. Disruption is defined as posting a large number of messages to a newsgroup which contain no substantive content, to the extent that normal discussion in the group is significantly hindered.
    Examples of disruptive activities include, but are not limited to, posting multiple messages with no text in the body, or posting many follow-ups to messages with no new text.
  • Messages may not be canceled, except by the author or by official newsgroup moderators performing their duties.
  • The Usenet news service included with a Dial Up/High Speed service account is provided for interactive use by the subscriber, using a commonly-available NNTP client such as Netscape Communicator, Outlook Express. Non-interactive clients which download Usenet articles in bulk are prohibited.

Internet Relay Chat:

  • The Dial Up/High Speed service may be used to participate in "chat" discussions. These discussions may be hosted by CANINET servers, by third party servers, or may not involve any servers at all. In all cases, Caninet does not normally monitor the contents of the discussion and is not liable for the contents of any communications made via Internet chat. The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to perform chat "flooding." Flooding is defined as deliberately repeating actions in quick succession in order to fill the screens of other Internet users with text.
  • The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to send messages which disrupt another Internet user's equipment, including software, hardware, and user display.
  • The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to access any chat server in violation of the acceptable use policy of that server. The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to manipulate any chat server in order to harass or disconnect other Internet users, or to gain privileges which have not been authorized. A customer may not use the Dial Up/High Speed service to connect to chat servers or channels from which they have been previously banned.
  • The Dial Up/High Speed service may not be used to continue to send chat messages to an Internet user who has indicated their desire to not receive such messages.
  • Forging, altering, or obscuring your identity while participating in chat sessions is forbidden. You, may, however, use a nickname as long as all chat participants are able to discover your real name via normal Internet conventions, such as the "WHOIS" command or "DNS".

Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations:

  • You must comply with the current bandwidth, data storage and other limitations.
  • Users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict or inhibit any other user's normal use of the Dial Up/High Speed services.
  • Caninet customers may not resell, share, or otherwise distribute the Dial Up/High Speed service or any portion thereof to any third party without the written consent of Caninet Communication. For example, you cannot provide Internet access to others through a dial up/high speed connection, host shell accounts over the Internet, provide email or news service, or send a news feed.
  • The Caninet Dial Up/High Speed service offering is designed for your personal use of the Internet from a single computer at any time. You may not use single user account from 2 computers at a same time. You may not run programs or servers which provide network services to others via the Dial Up/High Speed service.

Violation of Acceptable Use Policy:

  • Caninet does not routinely monitor the activity of accounts for violation of this Policy. However, in our efforts to promote good citizenship within the Internet community, we will respond appropriately if we become aware of inappropriate use of our Services.
  • Caninet prefers to advise customers of inappropriate behavior and any necessary corrective action. However, if the Dial Up/High Speed service is used in a way which CANINET, in its sole discretion, believe violate this Policy, Caninet may take any responsive actions they deem appropriate. Such actions include, but are not limited to, temporary or permanent removal of content, cancellation of newsgroup posts, filtering of Internet transmissions, and the immediate suspension or termination of all or any portion of the CANINET services. Caninet will not have any liability for any such responsive actions. The above described actions are not Caninet's exclusive remedies and Caninet may take any other legal or technical action it deems appropriate.
  • Caninet reserves the right to investigate suspected violations of this Policy, including the gathering of information from the user or users involved and the complaining party, if any, and examination of material on Caninet’s servers and network. During an investigation, Caninet may suspend the account or accounts involved and/or remove material which potentially violates this Policy.
  • You hereby authorize Caninet to cooperate with (i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations, and (ii) and system administrators at other Internet service providers or other network or computing facilities in order to enforce this Policy. Such cooperation may include Caninet providing the username, IP address, or other identifying information about a subscriber.
  • Upon termination of an account, Caninet is authorized to delete any files, programs, data and email messages associated with such account.

The failure of Caninet to enforce this Policy, for whatever reason, shall not be construed as a waiver of any right to do so at any time.

You agree that, if any portion of this Policy is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion will be construed consistent with applicable law as nearly as possible, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect.

This Policy shall be exclusively governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the Province of Ontario.

Customers should also familiarize themselves with the Customer agreement form they signed (Caninet Service Application Form).